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- Today's Moment of Idealistic Naivete: Wikileaks: http://wp.me/pCprU-mB 2 years ago
- Ending the War on Drugs: http://wp.me/pCprU-mw 2 years ago
- Twilight Of The Suburbs, Now Home To One-Third Of America's Poor http://huff.to/bGZP7F 2 years ago
- U.S. Subways Harness Kinetic Power To Recycle Train Energy http://huff.to/bVsXvR 2 years ago
- America's Walk Deficit http://yhoo.it/dijIvg 2 years ago
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Recent Posts
- Today’s Moment of Idealistic Naivete: Wikileaks
- Ending the War on Drugs
- The Most Walkable Cities in the World
- It’s Where We Live
- Can Cities Feed Themselves?
- French Street Artist Wins TED Humanitarian Prize
- Dimanche Sans Voiture
- Are Brussels and Los Angeles Sister Cities?
- Masdar begs the question: What exactly is meant by “a sustainable city?”
- Is Generation Y Passing on Cars?
- Can Cities Make Us Crazy?
- Stranger Studies 101: Cities as Interaction Machines
- Does New Orleans Have an Identity Crisis?
- Three Urban Interventions in Two Hours: NYC
- Cargo Bike Spotted…
Tag Archives: San Francisco
Imagining a City Built for Bicycles
A lot is made, and rightfully so, of the differences between walkable cities and auto-dependent cities, but isn’t there a middle way? Truly walkable cities, like most medieval walled cities and their small town USA descendents, aren’t really cities in the modern context. They can’t accommodate the scale and diversity we now associate with a city. Auto-dependent cities handle scale and diversity just fine, but they disconnect people from the built environment and each other. But what if we built our cities for bicycles? What would that look like? What benefits and drawbacks would this model have?
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Posted in architecture, Auto Independence, can bicycles save the world?, Culture, human scale, Josh Grigsby, Livability, Placemaking, transit, Transportation, Uncategorized, urban design, urban planning, walkable, What if?
Tagged accessibility, air pollution, autodependence, beach cruiser, bicycles, bikability, brooklyn, built environment, Cambridge, classism, college town, complete ecosystems, concrete jungle, cooperation, Copenhagen, crime deterrent, denmark, Euclidean zoning, human scale, Los Angeles, low density, manhattan, Massachusetts, medieval walled cities, mixed-use, mobility, modern cities, noise pollution, norway, obesity, para-transit, permeable pavers, population density, portland, Providence, rhode island, San Francisco, seattle, social change, sunbelt, sustainable settlements, Switzerland, trampe, transit, trondheim, urban core, urban density, vancouver, walkability, working bikes, Zurich
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Interview: Peter Sigrist and Katia Savchuk, co-founders of polis
I’ve mentioned before that though I didn’t discover polis until after beginning planologie, polis is in many ways a working model for what I hope planologie will become. Sitting down (virtually – we chatted online via Google WAVE) with Pete and Katia, the cofounders of polis, seemed logical for the first planologie interview.
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Posted in Interview, Josh Grigsby, Polis, Uncategorized
Tagged adaptive reuse, Anthony M. Tung, Bill McKibben, blogging, Brendan Crain, Civic Nature, collaboration, community development, Cornell, dharavi, globalism, Google WAVE, Harvard, Hernando de Soto, housing, India, informal settlements, katia savchuk, Koliwada Urban Typhoon, McKinsey, megacities, Moscow, Mumbai, NGOs, peter sigrist, Polis, residential mobility, San Francisco, Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres, urban decision-making, urbanism, Westernization, Where
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Picture-Perfect Portland?
Portland is one of the most-praised cities in contemporary America. But is the hype real? To some extent, it actually understates the case.
Portland didn’t invent bicycles, density or light rail — but it understood the future implications of them for America’s smaller cities first, and put that knowledge to use before anyone else. The longest journey begins with a step, but you have to take it. Nobody else did. In an era where most American cities went one direction, Portland went another, either capturing or even creating the zeitgeist of a new age. Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Placemaking, Portland: City or Scene?, transit
Tagged 8664, Aaron Renn, bicycles, bike lanes, built environment, Chicago, density, JC Stites, light rail, Los Angeles, Louisville, microbreweries, national imagination, New York, OregonLive, portland, portland hype, reclaimed waterfront, San Francisco, small city, urban planning, West Coast, zeitgeist
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I Colonize
Urban gentrification is like global colonization. An advantaged people decide they fancy an area and use their advantages to push into it with, at best, disregard, and at worst, disdain, for the people already living there. The invaders use their might to erase the culture of current residents, and eventually, to erase the residents all together.
I know this, and yet, my feelings about gentrification are ambivalent: a blend of concern and guilt. Yes, guilt. Because I have been an urban colonizer. Continue reading
Posted in Culture, History, Livability, Neighbors, Placemaking, Uncategorized
Tagged Chicago, cohabitation, community, gentrification, housing projects, Michigan Avenue, middle class, Mission District, neighborhoods, property ownership, race, San Francisco, single mothers, Taigi Smith, urban colonization, Utne Reader, What Tami Said, White Flight, working class, yuppies
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Universal Beauty and the Responsibility of Cities
In chapter eight of Anthony M. Tung’s erudite and impressive Preserving the World’s Great Cities: The Destruction and Renewal of the Historic Metropolis, there is a passage that stopped me in my proverbial tracks and hasn’t left my thoughts since. Tung is writing about Amsterdam at the dawn of the 20th century:
As parts of the inner city became slums and were threatened with clearance, and as picturesque canals were filled in to create new roads and better circulation, elements of the historic environment began to be eliminated. Growing numbers of citizens became alarmed and called for preservation of the historic center. In addition, a new ring of speculative housing began to surround the old metropolis. Numerous Amsterdammers began to ask that the expansion of the city meet a reasonable standard of beauty. Continue reading
Posted in Culture, History, Josh Grigsby, Livability, Placemaking, Rants, Sustainability, Uncategorized, What if?
Tagged American cities, Amsterdam, Angkor Wat, Anthony Tung, Austin, Babylon, Baltimore, Beauty, Bicycle Diaries, Cambridge, Camillo Sitte, Chapel Hill, Chicago, cobblestone, Craftsman bungalows, David Byrne, Denver, farm houses, Frank Gehry, google maps, H.P. Berlage, historic preservation, Invisible Cities, Iroquois Confederacy, Italo Calvino, J.R.R. Tolkien, Key West cottages, Kyoto, Main Street, McMansions, medieval cities, modernism, modernization, Mulholland Drive, municipal, neighborhoods, New England fishing village, Pantheon, Paris, parking lots, Parthenon, Peter Jackson, Petra, Plan Zuid, portland, public way, pyramids at Giza, quality of life, Ray Kappe, Rivendell, San Francisco, Santa Monica, Santorini, Sarasota, Sausalito, screen shots, Seven Generation, Shire, shopping malls, slum clearance, sprawl, Stefan Sagmeister, stewardship, street grid, strip malls, Sustainability, Tibor Kalman, trailer parks, urbanism, Varanasi, Vienna, Wonder
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